


Just a little broken, just a little lost.

by rayfelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Eren struggles with memories from the titan times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren painted them. He painted the nightmares that haunted his dreams, the faces he could never truly forget. The boy painted out his pain and loneliness and hope that died young and before it had even started to bloom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a little broken, just a little lost.

**Author's Note:**

> This hasn't been betaed, so I probably killed the English language.

There were drawings in black playing on the white walls of Eren’s apartment. There were places were the paint was still dry, glistening in the evening sun. The paintings looked alive, so alive it seemed that they will start to move any second now, step out of the wall and come and embrace the boy that felt so alone and thrown away.

Eren painted them. He painted the nightmares that haunted his dreams, the faces he could never truly forget. The boy painted out his pain and loneliness and hope that died young and before it had even started to bloom.

At the end of the day Eren was left stripped bare of the pain that seemed to eat him alive. If even just for a moment.

…

When he wasn’t painting Eren walked the crowded streets in search of something, _someone_. He’d look around, lost and confused, before giving up and following where the people took him. Sometimes he found the graceful companionship of a drug to soothe his tired, tired mind. And sometimes it was another human body – so warm and comforting and _real_.

There was nothing else that he could do. A little, abandoned child stripped of love and care. No one needed him, no one seemed to care. Except for the paintings that would stare into his very being with cold and unseeing eyes, eyes that he had never given them.

Come another morning and Eren woke up at a hotel room, or an apartment he didn’t know. He’d smile shyly and look at his partner the right kind of way and be rewarded with coffee and breakfast before leaving. Money didn’t matter to him. Money had no value in the world of the cursed and damned and broken.

…

Once a week his father came and stared at Eren. The man would judge the boy without making a sound and then judge the new addition on the white apartment walls. Grisha had given up hope for his little boy, the crazy, little boy who dreamed of monsters and blood.

It was easier to just push away than try and fix something.

But Eren didn’t care. He never had cared, not even when his mother begged him to just _talk_ with the specialist, to stop biting his hands bloody. She had begged Eren to become a normal child. A child like any other. There had been tears in her eyes and sliding down her cheeks, Eren remembered them well, and his mother’s voice broke before she turned away and pretended to forget.

As long as Eren stayed away he was given a home and money.

Abandoned little boy, forgotten little boy. His only friends were the black people painted on the walls and the emptiness of his apartment. Memories couldn’t be trusted – dreams even less – but that was all that Eren had. He was hollow inside and out and hurting so much that it was hard not to scream his throat raw.

…

Sometimes Eren opened all the windows and stood still as the air washed over him. It felt as if he could give everything away to the wind and then forget who he was, forget the people he desperately needed but couldn’t even name.

It all felt so real. The memories that froze him during the day, the headaches that seemed to dig up more and more things, details buried away by time, the dreams that left him hollow and covered in cold sweat at the end of the night – it all felt like it had happened just days ago. A reality more real than the one Eren was in now. A world so beautiful yet deadly.

There are shadows that loom in the dark corners of his empty rooms. There is silence that whispers in Eren’s ears about monsters that could rip him apart so easily, as If he were a rag doll and not a human. Some nights he doesn’t sleep at all. Just paints out his trembling and his quiet sobs.

He paints the dead. He paints the alive. He paints the monsters with no faces and monsters that are smiling so widely the skin on their face rips. It’s the only way Eren knows, the only way that actually helps. Sometimes. Sometimes it helps, just a little.

Eren leaves his apartment once he’s done and doesn’t come back until it is night once more.

…

The front door is open – it has always been. Eren doesn’t lock it. He leaves it open as an invitation, a plea of sorts. It doesn’t matter who does it, but he so desperately wanted to be taken away. To be freed and told that it was ok to be a little mad, a little broken and just a little sad. Those were Eren’s wishes, kept locked away in a glass jar next to his bed.

One more person joins the group on the wall. A person Eren admires respects perhaps, even if the man has no face and no name. Just the swords in his hands, covered in black blood.

When the paint is dry enough Eren traces his fingertips over every line, every little detail of the man that now stands directly in front of the boy. It almost feels warm, but Eren has stopped hoping that any of these people are real. He just sits on the floor and watches the light play with the black lines in front of him well into the night.

…

There are days when all Eren can do is cry. Cry so hard that later his throat is sore and voice doesn’t work. Those are the worst days, when it feels like the world is pushing onto him, choking him from the inside with every breath he takes.

Maybe it’s for the best that there is no one to hear his screams and his cries. Maybe it’s for the best that the apartment he lives in is empty and only the paintings of his dreams are there to see him break apart a little more. It’s cold and lonely and so sad. He’s alone in this whole damn world, fighting the monsters that no one else seems to know about and trying to patch together the mess that he had become.

These were also the days when he got up and left the apartment on wobbly feet, walked the streets in search of someone to hold him close for the night. It was easy to act sane, so very easy.

…

Eren’s fingertips are black from the paint and another faceless memory takes up space on his white walls. A leader this time, fearless and strong. Someone that brought victory after victory inside of Eren’s dreams. The boy just stares at the black silhouette, paint soaking into his skin, and tries to remember why he feels like trusting this memory. It was strange, so very strange.

Broken, little boy. Sad, little boy. That was all that he was – abandoned and forgotten and lonely. And someone who wasted his life away talking with people who he didn’t know. People who surely did not exist outside of his own head. Foolish, little thing that hopes to find peace in the world he had created on his own.

But they were all that Eren had. Nothing else belonged to this poor child who lost a little bit of himself witch each passing day.

…

It happened when Eren was standing in front of his opened window, eyes closed and breathing in the city air. A brief knock on his door, followed soon by another one. His father never knocked and there was no one else who came to this apartment. And the doors were always open.

So he blinked once, twice and turned around to look at the door. The knocking hadn’t stopped. It took Eren a moment to realize that this was not happening inside of his head, that these were not the monsters from the shadows playing tricks on him. This was reality, something that was happening right now.

With a trembling voice the teen spoke out to the empty rooms and the knocking that the door is open, unlocked. He’s lost even more that usual now, watching as the handle moved and the door opened and then revealed three people standing in the hallway.

And the moment he sees the faces Eren _knows_ them by instinct. He glances at the black, faceless people staring down at him from the white walls and then back at the three standing at the entrance to his apartment. Eren knows he’s crying and yet he does nothing to stop it. Just falls on his knees and lets the tears slide down his face.

He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t alone. They were real, something more than just jumbled and bloody nightmares. And he… maybe he wasn’t so broken after all.


End file.
